Flesh of Petals
by talchi
Summary: His wife (oh! how much joy it is to say that of Eowyn, how impossible for others to comprehend, save perhaps those who know it already!) is still asleep, and her eyes are closed.


He wakes easily, and it does not bother him that the room around him is filled with streaming beams of sun, entering from the single, solitary window to the left of his bed. The room smells familiarly of lemon and grapefruit. Taythlin must have put in a cup of fragrance. The limp sheets feel alike to the flesh of flower petals.  
  
His hands wander as he blinks once, twice, thrice, and attempts in bemused vain to dispel the sleep from his mind. They make contact with hair, long and golden, shining like molten gold now still flowing. His wife (oh! how much joy it is to say that of Eowyn, how impossible for others to comprehend, save perhaps those who know it already!) is still asleep, and her eyes are closed. Her steady chest rises up and down.  
  
He does not wish to awake her, not yet, for that would, he knows, break the soft spell that some invisible, unknown and uncouth feeling has cast on his being. He thinks it has perhaps something to do with the room.   
  
He looks around, and he sees the crisp and elegant new drawer, and the single vase of soft white flowers that stands proud there, and then his hand, still buried deep in his sleeping wife's comforting hair, is pulled off with a moan, and her unclouded eyes turn to him even in half-sleep, and he cannot, does not want to deny, that it is not an unpleasant feeling.  
  
He knows how odd he must look, half sitting, half lying in their bed, propped up by his elbow, silently touching Eowyn's hair. Well, he thinks. And they do not speak, like the way one's thoughts are silent, and it is comforting, because they are in sync. They are friends, though not the best of friends, and they are sure, passionate lovers, and they are husband and wife, and woman and man, and faulted and faulted, and he feels this now, but it is not in words.  
  
"Hello, Faramir," she says calmly, still lying down. The white softness of the bed is too inviting. He looks down to her and says nothing, but he longs, suddenly, in the way a child will long suddenly, with no explanation, for a comfort from some responsible person, to kiss her on the untried softness of her lips.  
  
So he does, and she giggles (though that is perhaps the wrong word for the soft, light sound she makes), and pulls him down to her, like a man pulling the heroine for a lover's lay, save they only kiss and rise and she commands, with a certain childish certainty, the maid to prepare a breakfast.  
  
Their house in Emyn Arnen is a bright, light-filled, two-leveled house. There are four rooms on the second level: one for the Prince and Princess of Ithilien, and the second for their maid Taythlin. The two others are vague symbols of hope, and of dreams not yet realized. As one looks at the house from the outside, one notices a certain tendency that might bother one, but only for a vague moment that passes, like a far-bound train never to return.   
  
The house is of course competent, skilled and beautiful, and bright, and that is the problem. There is no darkness in Eowyn's house. No respite from the constant light.   
  
And so this morning in the spring of the fourth month of wedded bliss, Faramir sits down with his wife. They sit down with the ease of two players of a common game, and together eat in contented silence. Taythlin, whose name Eowyn callously forgets occasionally, hovers in a contemptuous affection, with her simple white dress that is elegant and somehow, beautifully, for a maid.  
  
But this is common, and this morning, Eowyn rises, and she is wearing a brown dress that is cut off roughly at her knee, and despite the distinctly masculine essence of the ragged piece of unfit clothing (as Taythlin would call it, for no Princess, she thinks but says not, should wear such a piece of litter), Eowyn is beautifully soft and somehow differently lush in her roughly sewn, badly cut brown dress which she has made herself and wears it proudly and with an insecure defiance as she wipes her mouth and lowers her eyes to her wooden plate.  
  
And Faramir loves her for it. He loves many things about her. He loves the way her face seems to widen yet still remain perfect (at least in his humble opinion) when she smiles, and he loves the way she now turns in casual indifference, the hems of her dress wavering and touches her fingers lightly to her lips and waves her hand to him, and she knows that she will be outside, kneeling among the compost and rubbish and dirt, and tending to her flora.  
  
He turns to his study, for it is now that he reads and translates, and with a twinge of pleasant guilt writes it again in prose, the story of Turin and Nienor.  
  
_But ere the autumn came by the skill of Brandir and she was healed of her sickness, and she could speak; but nothing did she remember of the time before she was found by Turambar on the mound of Haudh-en-Elleth. And Brandir loved her; but all her heart was given to Turambar._  
  
And Faramir puts down his quill and thinks. He in fact daydreams, but because the mere mention of brother, as he has thought of when he hears of Turin and Nienor, doomed in their ill love as brother and sister, but to never know, and to cleave to each other as if they were unrelated in blood and flesh and not brother and sister, closest of kin, and so at the slightest hint of brother, and he is dragged to memories of years long gone, with a haze that is neither golden nor of shadow, but perhaps of both, of a feeling that is neither maternal nor erotic, but both.  
  
And at the same time he wonders whether he should put a footnote to indicate what Haudh-en-Elleth would mean.  
  
Faramir thinks of Boromir. Then of Denethor, the Lord Denethor, his father (yes, he was, and that is what makes his memory so sordid and painful and something else that he cannot describe but links hesitantly to Eowyn) and his lord, and his last fey moments that Faramir has somehow pieced together from startled recounts of the few people that have witnessed it. And then he thinks of Finduilas, someone he does not know well enough to even call friend, much less Mother, but she is (or was, he knows that would be more appropriately as she has been in a grave for as long as his knowledgeable memory can recall), and his thought comes to rest again on Eowyn, and at this point he looks up, his mind in turmoil but with a smile on his face as his wife enters in her muddied brown dress swirling lazily at her knees and twin roses borne in her cheeks and extends her hands, scrubbed clean, and he takes it and she pulls at him with exaggerated effort and they laugh, and his fears are forgotten because the moment is perfect.   
  
Perfect in every aspect, from the love so rarely shown so openly in her steely eyes to the wild loveliness of her tresses and he twines them in his fingers and she shakes her head in exasperated delight at his silly fascination with her hair and leads him out of the study, like to an excited child for a day on a beach.  
  
"I must go on a ride, soon," she announces.  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Join me," she pleads, but in his heart he knows she is aware of his yet-unspoken answer. "To be in that room for the entire morning must be quite ill for your health."  
  
"I am lucky," he says, meaning to continue, but first leaning in to kiss her (and he cares not where) but she ducks and laughs in careless amusement and pulls the tips of his fingers to hers, though she is in constant wonderful motion, and he is captivated, never failing to be after all this-  
  
"Then come! Taythlin has wrapped up our lunch!" And he obeys in hopeless love, watching the sparks in her sunny hair.  
  
They make their way to the stables, large enough for 10 horses (though Eowyn has scoffed at this) though they have only two and a young filly that was the gift of a knowing friend. Eowyn's horse is a grey mare, her hide as cloudy as a dark storm threatening to gather yet willing to disperse, snorts her impatience and tosses her head. Eowyn runs to her.  
  
The stable must smell comforting to her, he thinks. She must have been to a similar scene a hundred times. His own mare turns to him, expectantly humane. They mount.  
  
"Where to?" says Eowyn, looking jaunty and aristocratic, making Faramir want to throw her down from her horse and kiss her breathless.  
  
"Oh," he replies after a few moments. "I had thought you had planned it already."  
  
"Why would you think that?" And there is a boyish tone to her voice, and he loves this too. "Well, I have just thought of one supremely suitable place now."  
  
The unborn afternoon is pleasant. No, perhaps that is the wrong word for so delightful a day. Here he is, he thinks, on a morning that seems to be made for the two of them. There are unseen birds in the trees lining their luxurious green grass, though he can see a telltale flutter. He can see the dotted scatterings of flowers, and he yearns now, to lie down among the grass and just look up to the blue sky, the sapphire sky (how come it to be so blue?), so like a soldier climbing out of his battered, muddy tank, and lie down in peace, in ever-lasting happiness on the green grass perhaps for the last time, green for life, life life life! So after killing, hurting, seeing blood, oh the blood rushes in his ears, it is like the mighty bellow of the river, how cold and relentless, always always, and now he can see it red, again, not again! Or is it the sound of hooves gall-  
  
"Faramir?" Eowyn's voice betrays her impatience. "We arrive. Perhaps you expect to eat on your horse?"  
  
He looks at her, looking up at him. Her mare is nowhere in sight. Perhaps she has let it go. He sits like a statue on his own. Eowyn's strong hands tug at him, and he is off. They tumble on the grass like children, and his mare stomps in protest, but is off at his signal, perhaps to browse in peace.  
  
They right themselves. Eowyn's hair has green bits in it. She does not care, though one floats in her view. But of course, Eowyn would not care. She is not like to the ladies of Gondor, so magnificent in their splendour and so doomed in their fallen fate to be with handsome men, or as it was before the War. The White Lady of Rohan has never met them, and perhaps, he hopes, never shall. She would not do well among them.  
  
"What do you think of?" she asks, touching his neck, as if looking for a pulse.  
  
"Of you, of course." She looks pleasantly arrogant. Her hands already dabble on the grass, flattening and redoing the coarse cloth that their food is to be laid upon. The grass pokes its persistent spikes through, and she gives up after a particularly forceful slap to the ground.  
  
They are alone, secluded. He can hear the thin, clear stream nearby. He imagines splashing his hand in its fast currents, watching his hands as a barrier against the water. He can taste the sweetness of the water in his mouth. The trees around them no doubt benefit from this stream. He wonders how many other people have been here, have experienced the buzz of invisible insects, and have known the quiet babbling of the stream.  
  
He feels silence, yet it is not. The hum of life is all around them. The most peaceful of thoughts. Long ago, he thinks. Long ago had he been here with Eowyn, or perhaps his brother, or perhaps his father when he was in a placid mood, but preferably, he knows, with Eowyn, he would have thought he had died. He would have been surprised at her brown dress, for he would have believed that such angels would wear white. He would have been amazed and withdrawn and in love. At least, he thinks, that one thing has not changed. Long ago is another life.  
  
And he realizes now, just looking at her, how much it has truly changed. This is not the Undying Lands that he has written and read of, nor the gray Halls of Mandos, nor the place where Men go, if after they die they really do rest. This is a sun-filled, peaceful, joyful clearing a short ride from their home where he will now eat his lunch with his wife. And he knows in a second of stunning realization that things have changed. He has, in a moment of still standing time, known that his life really has changed, for the better, he thinks, and he wants it to last forever, this knowledge, but it is fading fast, and soon it has stopped glowing red hot in the forgery that is his mind and now he looks at Eowyn and they eat.  
  
And he is amazed that he has just discovered this. It should have been obvious. But no, it was not. It was a subtle work, shifting ever-so-gently from despair to one of content, from contentment to joy, and from joy to bliss.  
  
She is in a fine mood. She dances for him, a silly, romantic dance that urges on his heart. It is fast and blurred as her body arcs and bends. There is no music of skilled hands, but it matters not, for the music of the clear stream is enough. There is rhythm in this, he knows. He can somehow see her dance fitting the stream's whisper, like a harmony of voices, for her body's movement is lower in tone, more base, more primitive, and the stream tells of the love of life, and oh! he rises now and holds her and dips her down and she smiles.  
  
How he loves her, how he adores her so desperately, with such blissful agony! A poem blooms in his heart.  
  
The sun casts beams on the two like the morning, this morning, that he woke, though it is like a dream now as he feels his wife's steely hands on his back, and she kisses him, and it is like the kiss of a stream, fast and fluid and light. It is perhaps, he fancies, what has been written in tales, that one kiss that perhaps the two will remember for the rest of their lives, and there shall never be another like it, something to remember and to shine by and to live by through sorrow and joy, through treachery and loyalty.   
  
But there have been many like it. Every kiss, he decides, will be remembered. "That was a pleasant meal, husband," she laughs as they sit together. Eowyn's hands wrap around him and her head is on his shoulder.  
  
"You must give Taythlin our thanks," he replies, knowing she will admit that yes, she will perhaps acknowledge the maid that holds her in such high respect.  
  
This is, he knows, the thing called happiness, as she talks and confides to him, and the afternoon sun rises to its peak and swings down in its continual circle, and the shadows grow longer then shorten and they at last call for their horses and ride to home under a spectrum of colours, and Eowyn talks earnestly to Taythlin as he is in his study, once again pondering the story of Nienor and Turin. 


End file.
